MAMPARA OF THE WEEK

Her­man Mashaba

Min­is­ter of en­vi­ron­men­tal af­fairs Nomvula Mokonyane nar­rowly es­caped mampara sta­tus this week when it turned out that the san­i­tary pads she ap­peared to be giv­ing Grade R pupils in a tweeted pic­ture were in­tended for older girls. In­stead, the crown again goes to Her­man Mashaba, who re­acted to the pic­ture by ac­cus­ing Mokonyane of “de­stroy­ing the fu­ture of our youth” and of get­ting kids to “fo­cus on sex in­stead of ed­u­ca­tion”. When a Twit­ter cor­re­spon­dent asked, “How do san­i­tary pads have any­thing to do with sex?”, Mashaba suc­cinctly replied: “A lot.” Hog­a­rth is mys­ti­fied at the Joburg mayor’s grasp of bi­ol­ogy. Then again, this is the same per­son who made a con­nec­tion be­tween sheep meat, mi­grants and ebola. When it comes to putting his hoof in it, Mashabaa is a lamb to the slaugh­ter.